Simon Raven Quotes

A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

I think I tend to try to let a woman walk through a door first, and I walk on the outside on the street. But that's probably because I'm an ancient creature.

In social matters, pointless conventions are not merely the bee sting of etiquette, but the snake bite of moral order.

I formally proposed. I'm a good Southern gentleman.

I was always the Southern gentleman.

I don't really believe in rules, but I do like old-fashioned dating where you don't call the guy until he calls you. I don't think it's like he's got to do this and that's the rule.

I'm an American searching for some sort of parameters, a way of life - I'm looking for a slight formality, for a place where you can never be overdressed.

I'm the first to admit I've had a sheltered life. I grew up in the country and went to a boarding school. It was all just part of the business - be nice to everyone and all that.

Gone are the days when a gentleman lightly took your hand in his and brushed his lips across it, or tipped his hat to acknowledge you as he chivalrously stepped aside to let you pass.

All ladies arriving here as strangers it seems expect to be visited by the wives of the heads of the departments and even by the President’s wife. Mrs. Madison subjected herself to this torture, … but from which having begun the practice, she never found an opportunity of receding from.

Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

The hat is not for the street: it will never be democratized. But there are certain houses that one cannot enter without a hat. And one must always wear a hat when lunching with people whom one does not know well. One appears to one's best advantage.

A gentleman doesn't pounce he glides. If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one.

It is helpful to know the proper way to behave, so one can decide whether or not to be proper.

We say grace and we say ma'am. If you ain't in to that, we don't give a damn.

From its earliest beginnings, golf has been a gentleman's game - to be played as much for the sake of the game as for the contest.

A lot of our lives are about being polite.

To rage and mock is gentlemanly, to grumble and whine is not.

I think that being a gentleman is what matters; taking them out to a nice dinner, open the doors, stuff like that.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

You’re a gentleman,” they used to say to him. “You shouldn’t have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that’s no occupation for a gentleman.

People say when you're in love, you don't need etiquette. Well, you need it then more than anything. Or they say, "At home I can just be myself." What they mean is they can be their worst selves... They always mean they will save all their anxiety about how to behave for somebody like the head waiter of a restaurant, someone they'll never see again.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored.

There is only one immutable law in life - in a gentleman's toilet, incoming traffic has the right of way.